Carpenter Queen Waterlogging?

[SkeleAnt]

I’m not really sure how else to describe this situation, but I will do the best I can.

My dad found a black carpenter ant queen moseying around on the carpet in one of the rooms of our house. Fortunately, he called me in to identify it, and I carefully picked her up and proceeded to give her a test tube set up to store with the rest of my newly caught ants Queens. She was incredibly docile, crawled right onto my hand, and I assumed it was because she’d been stuck in the house for a period of time where she couldn’t find any digging material or moisture, so she was probably very weak. The other carpenter ant queens I’ve caught were far more active, and were way more upset about being caught at first before they finally settle down. Not this lady.

As soon as I had her in the set up and blocked it with cotton, she immediately went to the cotton ball with the water reserve and started drinking. I watched her for almost a half an hour and she would not stop. I continued to assume this was because she was probably very dehydrated, so I put her in the dark and decided to check on her one more time in a few hours. When I checked on her again, after about 2 1/2 hours of her being in the test tube, she is still drinking water. She’s drinking enough water to the point that occasionally a droplet of water will form around her mouth as if she’s spitting it back out. She is also doing a strange behavior where she spreads her legs out and kind of flattens her self to the ground for a bit and tapping her legs and antennae around, before standing back up, turning around, and guzzling more water from the cotton ball. It’s regular water, there’s no honey or sugar in it.

My next assumption was that she thought there was too much water so she was trying to drink some of it to make it dryer, so I made a new set up with a cotton ball that I made sure was only slightly damp on the top, and moved her to that test tube. And again, the first thing she did when she got in there was to start drinking more water. I checked the cotton ball in the original tube, and it was nowhere near soaking wet, so at this point I’m at a complete loss. I’ve never heard of this before, none of the other queens I’ve caught have done this, and I’m a little bit concerned that she’s going to water log her body and die. Does anyone have any insight on this matter?

[QJH2023]

your queen ant is probably fine is she still drinking the water? as for the flattening of herself ive noticed that 1 out of 16 queens show this trait

[SkeleAnt]

your queen ant is probably fine is she still drinking the water? as for the flattening of herself ive noticed that 1 out of 16 queens show this trait

As of this morning she seems to have finally quenched her thirst, no more excessive drinking. I check the queens once a week and my next check for the whole lot is in a few days, so I’ll leave her be and see how she does. Interesting to hear that some but not all ant queens do that flattening thing!

[SkeleAnt]

It’s been a little while since I replied to this, but an update on that carpenter queen, after about two weeks she finally started laying some eggs, but she stopped water logging her self after the first days so fingers crossed that things go well.

[AntsLuxembourg]

Maybe she wanted to enjoy her single live.
Nothing goes over some playing with water. haha ^^

Anyway I know that most ants do not need food for their first batch of eggs but maybe she could do with a droplet of honey. I had only one queen out of 9-10 which went for a small droplet of honey when I dropped on in. Sadly she died for some reason but it was interesting to observe a queen who works too. Like she didn't leave it to her workers but helps the workers too. Very motherly I find.

Anyway keep us updated and maybe she will start a regular event with her children.